Social Activism Meets the Bottom Line

Search engine innovator, AskPoodle.com, is sending advertisers and investors a wake-up call. AskPoodle.com makes a ripple in search engine advertising ROI and an outsourcing-aware public by introducing a locally—focused set of services for online advertisers, such as PayPerCall and “PayPerChat.” The positive impact on local economies coupled with higher ROI could start a trend.

Ubiquitous outcries from CNN’s Lou Dobbs and others have frequently resounded that local economies suffer dramatically in the short term when sales jobs are shipped overseas to countries like India. Security issues have also long been cited by many experts as another key problem. Journals such as the Business Week, August 16, 2004 article titled “Outsourcing: Fortress India” (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_33/b3896073.htm) have related concerns from experts that sensitive corporate, government and personal information often enters a regulation-free zone when it is outsourced to most overseas companies operating in countries without even the currently lax level of US standards on privacy in place.

AskPoodle.com’s founder, Luis Pereira, is asserting a revolutionary holistic solution that could feasibly become a new trend in search engine advertising. This new model would create a balancing act by encouraging more US companies to hire locally for their PayPerCall sales leads, and by encouraging more consumers to buy locally in both PayPerCall and PayPerChat sales. “The nature of PayPerCall is to support local sales agents and local sales, a win-win for employment and municipal tax bases,” says Pereira. Another boon to local-based PayPerCall sales is that regional flavor, dialect, and conventional ways of communicating are easier for a native to understand and appreciate than for a non-native. Still another key issue is also the need to demonstrate the fact that cheap labor needn’t so consistently come from overseas to service a community in Appalachia or small town America, when there are many willing to take sales agent jobs right in our own backyards. Much of the time these sales jobs can supplement a household income that is at or below the national poverty line. [Read the rest]